Penelope Crumb Read Online Free Page B

traditions. “Does eating ham-and-egg sandwiches all the time count?” I ask.
    Miss Stunkel looks around the room and says, “Someone is speaking, but I don’t see a hand raised.”
    I am that someone. So I put both of my hands in the air and keep them there in case I forget again. “What if you don’t have any traditions or costumes?”
    “Customs, not costumes,” says Miss Stunkel. And then she says that the purpose of the arm coat is to find out things you don’t know about your family. “That’s why you are going to be detectives.”
    Then my brains really start to work. Because I think about how I didn’t know I had a big nose that belongs to my not-dead grandpa Felix. And if I didn’t know that, there might be other things I don’t know about.
    Like, maybe Dad isn’t Graveyard Dead at all. Maybe he’s a secret agent who is undercover in some faraway place, like, as a taxi driver in one of those countries where cars have to stop for sheep that can cross the street by themselves, and we have to think he’s dead. At least for now. Until he can come home.
    Or maybe, just maybe, I have a secret aunt that nobody knows about who is really a queen from a faraway island with coconut trees and kangaroos. And maybe that island is full of people with big noses. She probably has been looking for me and my nose for a long time. So she can make me a warrior princess.
    In her kingdom, a big nose means royalty. Real warrior-princess material. And she will invite me to spend the whole entire summer with her. “Would you like a fancy lemonade drink with a tiny umbrella?” a butler would ask me while I wiggle my toes in the ocean. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I would like that very much,” I would reply, “just assoon as I take a swim alongside these purple polka-dotted fish with orange lips.”
    Then a high-pitch shriek from Patsy Cline interrupts my island thoughts.
    Miss Stunkel clutches her chest, and says, “Mercy. What is the matter?”
    Patsy Cline, being the good pupil that she is, has her hand raised. Then she points at the wall and yells, “Somebody graffitied my drawing. Look!”
    Everybody looks where she’s pointing. Angus Meeker’s mouth falls open and he says, “Whoa, man oh day!” But I don’t see what all the fuss is about.
    Miss Stunkel turns purple in the face. She clears her throat and says, “Who is responsible for this? I demand to know immediately.”
    I raise my hand, but Miss Stunkel doesn’t call on me. Instead, she looks at me like she’s sorry. Sorry for what, I don’t know. I drop my hand.
    Miss Stunkel wraps her fingers tight aroundFriday Lizard. “I’m waiting,” she says. “Who did this to Patsy Cline’s drawing? Who is the graffiti artist that made Penelope’s nose look so…umm, so…like that?”
    Graffiti artist? I look from Miss Stunkel to the nose in Patsy’s drawing, the one I fixed to look like it really does on my real face: bigger and with Grandpa Felix’s bump. I even drew on the skier with her goggles and everything.
    “Who?” says Miss Stunkel again, turning purple-er.
    “Me. I’m the graffiti artist,” I say. “What’s a graffiti artist?”
    Miss Stunkel’s eyes get so big that I’m afraid her eyelids will disappear inside her head where her brains live. And then I realize that I forgot to raise my hand this time. So I do. Both of them.
    But it must be too late, because Miss Stunkel’s fingers are still clamped around Friday Lizard. And I worry that her eyeballs are going to turn red like his. “You did this?” she says.
    “Yep.” I wave my hands at her so she’s sure to see that this time I remembered.
    “Penelope Crumb,” she says. “I’d like a Word with you after school.”
    By the look on her face, I know she’s not going to let me pick the Word.

6.
    M iss Stunkel’s Word turns out to be a Sentence. One with two parts to it. “Penelope Crumb, I’m very disappointed in you, and I don’t very much like to be disappointed in my